1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to selected ultra-violet light (UV) curable hot melt (or phase change) compositions and non-curable support material that can be used in a solid object printer to produce strong and desirable three-dimensional parts from CAD designs. In particular, this invention relates to non-curable phase change support compositions which are comprised of at least one fatty alcohol and an abietic rosin ester tackifier.
2. Description of the Relevant Art
Commercially available hot melt printers such as the three-dimensional ThermoJet solid object printer available from 3D Systems of Valencia, Calif., use a phase change material or ink that is jetted through a print head as a liquid to form wax-like thermopolymer parts. These parts contain mixtures of various waxes and polymers and are solid at ambient temperatures, but convert to a liquid phase at elevated jetting temperatures. Accordingly, phase change materials used in such printers are required to have a melting point of at least 65° C. and a viscosity of about 13 cPs at about 130° C. to about 140° C. (jetting temperature). Suitable waxes useful in these jettable phase change materials have included paraffin, microcrystalline waxes, polyethylene waxes, ester waxes and fatty amide waxes. Suitable polymers useful for these phase change materials have included polyurethane resins, tall oil rosin and rosin ester polymers.
Existing phase change materials have some problems associated either with their physical characteristics (e.g. they are weak and brittle and subject to cracking after being jetted) or have processing limitations (e.g. they must be jetted at relatively high temperatures (130–140° C.)) because of the high viscosities of the individual components of such materials. Additionally there is a need for support material that is easily jetted, but is also easily and quickly removed from the three-dimensional part. Accordingly, there is a need for better materials that overcome these problems. The present invention is believed to solve these problems.
This patent application is related to U.S. application Ser. No. 09/924,608 filed Aug. 6, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,660,209, which is a continuation of prior U.S. application Ser. No. 09/252,512, filed Feb. 18, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,270,335, which is a divisional of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/722,335, filed Sep. 27, 1996, now abandoned, which is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/534,813, filed Sep. 27, 1995, now abandoned. This application also relates to U.S. Pat. No. 6,193,923 which issued on Feb. 27, 2001 and is a divisional of Ser. No. 09/252,512. All of these related applications are incorporated by reference in their entirety herein.